Binge-r #192: Upload + Hannah Gadsby: Douglas
Byte Me: Robbie Amell (Nathan) and Andy Allo (Nora) in Upload
UPLOAD S1
Streaming Service: Amazon Prime Video
Availability: All 10 episodes now streaming
More Black Mirror than The Good Place, Upload is set in 2033 and follows the life, death, and digital afterlife of budding tech entrepreneur Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell), who after a self-driving car accident has his consciousness uploaded to an expensive luxury server. Traumatised by the experience, and facing an eternity as the guest of a grand Victorian-era hotel, Nathan soon discovers that he’s both dissatisfied and under the thumb of his entitled girlfriend, Ingrid Kannerman (Allegra Edwards), who has to approve his in-app purchases and by the third episode has her manicured finger poised over his delete button. “Life’s not fair, and neither is digital life extension,” his therapist remarks.
Upload has the rhythms of a mainstream American sitcom and a leading man whose jawline is network television calibre. The bleakness lurks beneath a shiny surface, complete with droll exchanges and a meet-cute between Nathan and his living handler, Nora Antony (Andy Allo). It was created by Greg Daniels, a serial success whose prior credits include the U.S. version of The Office and Parks and Recreation, and his craftsmanship and cynicism butt heads throughout. He’s certainly invested in the world-building, with both the everyday of 2033 and the server-based “heaven” strafed through with sardonic gags and uncomfortable updates. “I Googled him” a preacher at Nathan’s memorial service declares, as Nathan watches on and chats with family and friends via a screen, and the reliance on technology can reach absurdist extremes – the show has a love of exploding heads on a par with Scanners.
Nora has her own problems, including a bad boss, a sick dad, and working poverty, and the connection between Nathan and her transcends the corporeal divide between them, even as they’re diverted by the question of how he came to die and the mystery of why some of his scanned memories are malfunctioning. Mostly amusing, there are plenty of quandaries to be mulled over, including what makes you actually alive, what makes you happy, and when will Nathan realise that he was verging on full tech bro status. The first episode is bursting with set-up, but it moves faster – and gets funnier – after that, and while Upload is trying to be too much, what it does accomplish makes for a solid dystopian comedy whose best punchline may be that it was funded by Jeff Bezos.
>> Further Reading/Viewing: For The Age I wrote about Warwick Thornton’s The Beach, a fascinating personal essay that screens tonight on SBS and NITV, and will also be available via SBS on Demand [full review here].
A Star is Torn: Hannah Gadsby performing Douglas
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
HANNAH GADSBY: DOUGLAS (Netflix, 72 minutes): When she comes on stage for this Netflix special, the packed American theatre gives Hannah Gadsby a standing ovation. Everything in the Australia stand-up comic’s career, including her exit from it, was changed by the overwhelming success of Nanette [full review here], her monumental 2018 Netflix performance. Gadsby’s new show can’t match that modern classic, but by acknowledging the expectations and inverting them, she offers an illuminating second act. This is an artist held aloft by the realisation of their own greatness, a subject for Gadsby less about ego than her relationship with autism. Gadsby’s anger is triumphant at times, her confidence impish. “I am fresh out” of trauma, she insists, but the way that she outlines the show, daring the audience to remain aloof despite being briefed in advance, lets the various subjects – social interaction, patriarchal control, crushing anti-vaxxers, and art history – intertwine and spill over in fascinating ways. It’s more outward looking than Nanette, and sleeker. There are plenty of punchlines and diversions, complete with that patented comic commentary she applies to her own routine. The biggest surprise about Douglas may be how entertaining it is.
New on SBS on Demand: Before Les Miserables and Cats, English director Tom Hooper made the fascinating The Damned United (2009, 94 minutes), a compelling adaptation (by The Crown’s Peter Morgan) of novelist David Peace’s apocalyptic reimagining of legendary football manager Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) and his disastrous two month spell at 1970s powerhouse club Leeds United.
New on Stan: Touching in its personal detail, astute in its cultural placement, McQueen (2018, 111 minutes) is a compelling fashion documentary about Alexander McQueen, the iconoclastic British designer; French filmmaker Claire Denis’ take on sci-fi, High Life (2018, 113 minutes) is typically elemental and allusive, but Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche give expressive energy to this story of a penal colony on a spaceship.
>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to read about Netflix’s club culture mystery White Lines and the beautifully bleaks SBS on Demand crime thriller ZeroZeroZero.
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>> Check the complete BINGE-R archive: 239 series reviewed here, 142 movies reviewed here, and 33 lists compiled here.
